


Recovery

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, angst angst angst, otacon wump, suicide attempt tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:37:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9335405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: Otacon gets kidnapped.  (Indulgent angst-fest to be honest.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adoxography](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adoxography/gifts).



> This story was originally started for a Supply Drop prompt but got way out of hand. As such, I'll be posting it here during Snot Week~! It isn't really related to the Snot Week prompts (despite the title) but... I just wanted to post a lot of snot things haha So there will be this fic and perhaps also updates on other fics here during the week. We shall see!
> 
> Dedicated to Adoxography because it was her original prompt that inspired it and also... Otacon wump pact lol

Stupidly, Snake tries the codec.

Of course Otacon’s nanomachines have died by now, and there’s nothing but a popping white noise in Snake’s ear, the hiss and whine of static. He listens to it while he waits, his fingers numb but firm on his gun, positioning himself for better aim over the metal crates he’s found safety behind. The compound is similar to Shadow Moses, or perhaps that’s just what he always thinks during a job in snow. It’s falling, an ethereal quiet snow, white in the floodlit night, but there’s no beauty in a situation like this, only the calculating understanding that the more it snows, the easier it’ll be for him to hide his own footprints.

The codec rings and he grimaces at the skip of hope in his heart. Stupid.

It’s Mei Ling.

“Otacon should be in one of the center rooms,” she says, with none of her usual lightness. She’s gotten older, hasn’t she? “There are three such rooms without a wall to the outside. Our best guess is that they’ll be keeping prisoners in that area, but there’s always a chance they might be up to something unexpected. Be careful, Snake.”

“Got it.” He watches over the sights of his gun as a pair of guards patrol the large side doors. They are dressed plainly, look rather cold even, but their faces are covered in black knit masks and their wide-legged gaits betray utter familiarity with the rifles in their hands, to the point of casualness.

“Snake,” Mei Ling presses. “All our digging hasn’t turned up any government affiliation here. This is a private grudge, a group set to make a lot of money off of that Metal Gear system you sabotaged. Because of that, these aren’t trained military men, but they’re still killers. It might be a style you’re not used to.”

“Got it.” One guard raises his gun to point mockingly as a bird flies overhead. A swaggering confidence. They might not have the same discipline, but they’ll shoot before asking questions. Thugs.

“Be careful,” Mei Ling repeats, perhaps with a thread of unnamed emotion.

“Call me with any updates,” Snake growls, and the codec disengages.

He thinks for a split moment of calling Otacon again, because this snow-silence is cloying and making adrenaline muck up his senses, but he hasn’t got time for distractions.

Crouched low, he steps his way sideways to another hiding place closer to the wall, his gun always trained on one of the guards.

There’s an air duct nearby. His entrance.

It would be so easy to kill them, but that would only alert the security cameras. Every action measured, same as any other mission. Cold logic and experience.

But deep down somewhere, in that human part Snake smothers in the hyper-aware, pulse ticking soldier who knows exactly how to do this, Snake wants to kill them.

He wants to kill all of them to make up for the fact he might be rescuing a corpse.

x

A month ago, they celebrated an anniversary.

Not _their_ anniversary. Not his and Otacon’s. It would be twee to celebrate those fumbling first months of Philanthropy with any seriousness, nor could they quite determine an exact date when their friendship dove off the deepend into something more, something that glued them to each other’s backs so thoroughly. Hell, they couldn’t say when exactly that friendship part had started either. It was all an unplanned nebulous thing that hovered in the background of the bizarre course of their lives, ever since Shadow Moses.

Instead, the anniversary was about Sunny.

They did know the day Jack brought her into their care. She was never supposed to stay, but it was hard to make decent life plans for a toddler while on the run, especially when that toddler was equally targeted by the Patriots. Philanthropy was running away more than ever now. At one time, they’d thought their enemy was simply governments, militaries, things that could actually be evaded with some quick feet.

Pretty naïve, looking back. 

A whole year they’d kept her in their fumbling care, and it was Otacon’s idea to celebrate that, in their little box of an apartment under the watchful guard of some of Nastasha’s fringe military connections.

It was a weird world for a little girl.

She sat mute in a chair at the kitchen table, chin barely reaching over the edge, those big somber eyes of hers always watching. She never smiled much, but as Otacon brought the Pillsbury cookies out of the oven, those eyes might have shone a little brighter.

Otacon burned himself, like an idiot.

“Ah!” He sucked the skin between his thumb and forefinger as Snake swooped in to catch the cookie tray on another dish towel. The cookies looked overly brown, but smelled good. Even Otacon could make pre-packaged dough.

They lit a fat white candle, the kind to keep mosquitoes away, and it gave off a vaguely minty smell that Sunny wrinkled her nose at. But she blew it out and made a wish, as if it was her birthday.

They didn’t actually know her birthday.

Otacon got her a small plate of three cookies and a glass of milk, and she sat there picking at a browned chocolate chip with pudgy fingers. She was still watching her guardians. It took a moment for the two men to realize she was waiting for them to settle in with their shares as well.

A funny little meal. They clinked their glasses of milk together in a three-way toast.

“Cheers!” Hal enunciated.

Sunny unsurprisingly remained mute, but the corners of her lips pinched, making a little dimple set into her cheek. A shy smile.

She scarfed down the cookies with impressive vigor.

Snake had never been a big fan of sweets, but he noticed with some amusement that Sunny was very adamant to see her caregivers enjoy their cookies as well. She was a good girl. They estimated she was gaining on three years old now, massively intelligent in a way that shouldn’t be packed into such a new brain, but also clumsy in her humanness. She’d only spent a year being human, after all. Snake could relate.

They stuffed the remaining cookies in some Tupperware, and while Otacon did the dishes, Sunny toddered over to dry them. Otacon spoke to her animatedly. He was always the sort to fill up silences with banalities (wasn’t that how he and Snake communicated at the start? Otacon yammering, Snake quietly existing like a dangerous house pet, but secretly listening). Instead of childish things, he talked at Sunny about his work, his computer mumbo jumbo. She seemed to understand every word.

Every so often, she would hum a little while they worked.

It was a soft, sweet sound.

That night, as she fell asleep on the sofa watching a space documentary, Snake snuck another glass of milk and watched Otacon tuck a blanket around her through the kitchen doorway.

It was like they were synchronized. The moment, Snake set his empty cup by the drying dishes at the sink was the moment Otacon came in to stand beside him again. Snake cupped a hand at the back of Otacon’s neck, curls of mousy hair…

“Snake,” Otacon said. “Do you ever think…”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

Snake waited. If it was important, Otacon would get it out.

It was important.

“Do you ever think you love her? Things like that?”

Snake hmmed, a low gravelly rumble in his throat.

“Maybe,” he admitted. It was a lot easier to admit things like love nowadays, as he and Otacon got older and as interpersonal squabbling seemed so much less important compared to their greater impossible mission.

Otacon sighed through his nose, closing his eyes as Snake thumbed circles into his neck. His body leaned into the warmth of Snake’s side automatically.

“That’s a little crazy isn’t it?” he asked.

“If pop songs are to be trusted, love is always a little crazy,” Snake said.

He glanced over to catch the sadness at the corners of Otacon’s mouth. It had been just over a year since Big Shell… Losing his sister.

Snake pressed a kiss to his temple.

“Do you love me?” Otacon asked, a moment of weakness.

“Yes,” Snake said simply.

“I love you too.”

“And you love Sunny.” Snake pulled away slowly, available to be snatched back if Otacon needed it. He didn’t. “If we can’t give her anything good, at least we can give her that.”

Otacon adjusted his glasses, smiling. “Yeah… I guess you’re right.”

Snake headed for the staircase to their storage space, hand slipping into his pocket.

“Where are you off to?” Otacon asked.

Snake pulled out his cigarettes and gestured with them, grinning.

Otacon shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“What am I going to do with you, huh?”

x

In their work, death was always a possibility. Snake knows that now more than ever as he crawls his way through a frigid air duct into the building where Otacon is being held.

Their last job was stupid. They shouldn’t have taken it at all, it was too much exposure for their current position under the Patriots’ thumb, and especially not with Sunny in their care. They should have just run away again.

Maybe they got too desperate, too tired of hopelessness.

The result was they destroyed another Metal Gear, but Otacon got captured in the process by some inconsequential gang. Not enough finesse to be the Patriots’ work, but surely they’re smiling somewhere now at Philanthropy’s rookie mistake.

At least Sunny is safe. Mei Ling took her, hiding her under the guise of military legitimacy, and though Sunny kicked and screamed to stay with Snake (that quiet child _screaming_ with every ounce of herself…), she would remain with Mei Ling and safe no matter what happened now.

On the most basic level of life, surviving is more important than having a family.

The anger swells in Snake’s chest again and he has to pause and calm himself back to steel before finally pulling himself out of the air duct and slinking across the gray hallway.

He travels in quick bursts, hunched low, zigzagging from cover to cover. He uses a pilfered keycard to get into the first of the central rooms, but it’s empty, save for some supplies. He steals as much as he can carry and keeps moving.

The second room opens the same way, and this is the one with Otacon.

It’s a cold, square room, and Otacon is curled up awkwardly on his side on the floor, a black bag over his head but there’s no mistaking who he is, not to Snake. He’s wearing jeans and a simple gray t-shirt, dark with sweat and blood, and it’s too cold for the environment. No shoes. He lays very still.

_Don’t be dead, Hal._

Snake crosses the room slowly, silently, and presses his fingers to Otacon’s shoulder before pulling the bag away from his face. Otacon’s eyes are closed, but he shifts with a slight groan, pressing his cheek into the floor. He’s got an ugly split lip, blood smeared and caked across his chin, but he’s alive.

Survival is most important.

“Sh. It’s me, Otacon.” Snake realizes with a grimace that Otacon isn’t bound to anything… and also why.

The slump of his body isn’t just exhaustion, it’s unnatural. One of his legs is bent awkwardly. He’s got some broken bones no doubt, but where? Moving him out will worsen the damage… 

Otacon makes a wet rasp of a noise. “Snake…?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“I talked.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I didn’t know where you were but I told them all I knew.”

“I said it doesn’t matter.” Snake props his knuckles against Otacon’s jaw, bowing close to his face so Otacon’s barely cracked eyes can get a bleary look at him, all huddled up beside him on the floor. “Sunny’s safe. Everything’s safe, just how we always planned it if something went wrong. Right now all that matters is getting you out of here.”

It was never supposed to be like this for Otacon. There’s no surprise, though, only grit teeth.

“M sorry...”

“Otacon. I need you to tell me where you’re feeling the most pain.”

Otacon wheezes out a jumpy laugh.

“Hal.”

“My back… I think they broke my back.”

It’s not a good sign he doesn’t even mention the leg.

Internally Snake swears. Moving Otacon in the wrong way could cripple him or worse. But there’s no other choice.

Externally, Snake goes silent, ghosting fingertips across Otacon’s side, partly probing for information, partly comfort.

He can’t love this man right now. Losing that tight grip on the protocol and experience would relinquish their only chance of getting out of here.

He leans close to whisper in Otacon’s ear, a quick overview of their escape plan.

He does what he can, splints the leg. Then he clumps up a strand of gauzy bandage and stuffs it into Otacon’s blood-caked mouth.

It’s rough, it’s horrible. But he heaves Otacon onto his back, his partner’s scream of pain muffled by the rag, his broken body jangling.

Time is the only thing on their side—Snake keeps moving as Otacon’s sobs and chokes grow fainter, head lolling over Snake’s shoulder.

They exit back into the hallway.

Crouched in an alcove, Snake calls Mei Ling.

“I need that ride. Now.”

She doesn’t ask if Otacon is alive—there’s no time for that. Instead she says, “We’re ready for you, Snake.”

The only way out is guns blazing.

For a quiet few moments Snake kneels there with Otacon flung across his back. Otacon’s hair against his cheek is cold and wet from sweat. It’s all dead weight and silence… Otacon has passed out.

Is he still breathing?

There’s no time to stop.

Snake throws a grenade at the same side door he’d avoided on his entrance, and it blows up with the two guards in a firey plume of shrapnel.

It’s still snowing outside, but everything’s hot and confused now as Snake runs for it, arm hooked under Otacon’s good leg.

An armored car careens through a whole partition of the gate surrounding the compound and inside Nastasha throws open a door and offers her hand. Snake practically leaps inside, and it’s only Nastasha and one of her boys holding onto him that keeps him and Otacon from flying out the still-open door as the car plows wildly away through the snow.

It’s a rough process, changing cars a few times. But at the end of it, when Snake presses a hand against the side of Otacon’s white face, unable _not_ to, his partner’s breath croaks raggedly from his throat.

Otacon is alive.

“Good work,” Snake mumbles at him, as a couple paramedics get to gently examining Otacon’s injuries.

Snake realizes belatedly that his hands are shaking, like he’s a kid back in Foxhound.

x

There are hospitals in the world particularly adept at keeping secrets, favorites of the mob and choice politicians. Snake and Nastasha take Otacon to one such establishment. Ironic how when looking for help they wind up relying on somebody who would just as well heal the brutes that kidnapped Otacon in the first place. It’s nothing deeper than ironic, though. Philanthropy learned how rare actual loyalty is a long time ago. This is just business as usual.

Snake winds up hunched over in a too-small waiting room chair while Nastasha makes phone calls. It’s an inner waiting room, rather private and discreet, meant only for these top-paying clients, and because of that it’s even more dangerously quiet than the average waiting room. Everything about hospitals makes Snake’s skin itch. The lack of smell, the aggressively soothing not-colors.

He smokes with an ugly glare pointed at the man behind the desk, challenging him to say anything about it.

Nastasha finally appears again, in her combat boots but otherwise rather nicely dressed, even if it is all wrinkled and blood-stained now.

“I’ve got ML on the phone,” she says. Snake keeps frowning ahead at the wall until she leans forward to pluck the cigarette from his lips. Then he frowns at her.

“What?” he snaps.

He doesn’t expect Nastasha’s expression to be so… kind.

“I thought you might want to talk to Sunny.”

He stares at the cellphone offered innocuously in her hand. An old flip phone.

He takes it with too-big fingers and holds it to his ear overly gently.

There’s silence on the other side, but a waiting silence. He imagines a little girl, mute and impassive but always observing, phone in her hand, Mei Ling probably hovering behind her. How much does Sunny know about what is going on? Has she expected Otacon to die? Or Snake?

“Sunny,” he says roughly.

He hears the static blossom of a shaky breath on the other line.

“It’s me. I’m ok.”

“Mm.”

“Uncle Hal is safe. A doctor’s taking good care of him. I’m with him.” He finds that he can’t lie to her, no matter how young she is. “We’re both in rough shape.”

“Mm.”

Her responses are quiet but firm. She’s a very brave girl.

_His girl_ , he thinks before immediately smothering it.

He doesn’t know what will happen to them all now, and he can’t just tell her it’ll be alright, or even that they’ll all be together again later. Whatever he says, it has to be the absolute truth.

“I’m sorry. I need you to stay strong for me, but you can do this. You’re strong enough.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good girl. I trust Mei Ling more than almost anybody. She’ll take care of you.”

“Mm.”

There must be a lot going on in that stuffed brain of hers, a lot of words she can visualize but can’t say out loud. They both just sit there in silence for a moment, listening to each other breathe.

“I’m going to give the phone back to Nastasha now,” he says gently. “Can you give it back to Mei Ling?”

“Mm.”

“Good girl.”

He hands the phone over listlessly and Nastasha trades for his cigarette stub.

He doesn’t smoke it though, as Nastasha gets back to business there beside him. He just rolls it between his thumb and finger, smearing gray ash in a grainy line on his skin.

x


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended to write/post this whole fic during Snot Week but, well... best laid plans of mice and scrubs orz Sorry for the delay!

They don’t let him see Otacon for a long time, his partner replaced with an ongoing commentary of medical jargon delivered to Snake and Nastasha at intervals. It’s like Otacon doesn’t exist anymore except in theory. In theory he’s in stable condition. In theory his back is set in a brace but x-rays haven’t been conclusive yet due to the inflammation of the surrounding muscle, requiring a few shots of painkillers. Whether or not he needs surgery is yet to be seen. His leg has been treated, as well as a few snapped ribs, but that was the easy part. Bruising, but minimal bleeding.

He’ll live. There’s no question about that.

It’s just a matter of how his injuries will affect the rest of his life.

These are all very simple concepts to comprehend, especially when delivered by a doctor with a soothing voice, but none of it says how Otacon is actually _doing_.

When Otacon wakes up, he’s going to be an absolute wreck in a way only partly related to his physical condition. The answer of _how_ wrecked isn’t included in any of these check-ins.

Snake plays nice with the doctors, but finally starts pressing them to let him into Otacon’s room.

He’s decided that the moment Otacon wakes up, even if it’s in an incomprehensible painkiller haze, Snake has to be there.

A young thirties-something doctor with bags under her eyes who reminds him of Naomi Hunter bears the brunt of most of his grilling until she finally mutters that Snake can visit after another round of tests. It’s clearly with chagrin, echoing in the too-loud thunks of her wedge heels as she clips back out of the waiting room, but Snake is satisfied.

Nastasha touches his temple with a long chipped-manicure finger.

“You’re going gray,” she tells him.

It’s true, the small hairs she’s teasing have been gray for awhile now. Over half of it’s gray.

“That’s fast for your age.” Her casual coolness has an undercurrent of steel. “When you’re finished antagonizing the doctors, perhaps you should get checked out as well. While we’re here already.”

Snake watches her a long moment.

“They’ll tell me to quit smoking probably,” he says.

She snorts. “Well. Nobody’s perfect.”

“I’ll pass.”

She doesn’t press the issue, but she does give his cheek an almost motherly pat.

x

Otacon’s room is dimly lit so he can rest, and he’s hooked up to an IV drip. Of course hydration and nutrition weren’t high priorities for his kidnappers. He’s on his back but propped up, braced, his leg stretched out in a cast protruding from under thin blankets. Snake pulls up a chair to sit beside him, eyes used to darkness, scanning his partner’s face with instinctive calculation.

It’s him, of course. It’s Hal.

Something in the looseness of the hospital gown or the bulkiness of his cast makes him look terribly skinny. He’s put on muscle in the years of Philanthropy, mostly at Snake’s insistence, but now he looks more like that scrawny kid scampering around Shadow Moses in sneakers. Twig-ish and too young.

His split lip has dried up into just a silver of darkened blood scabbed onto his lower lip, and the shadows of his face seem exaggerated, overly knobby and pale.

Very carefully, Snake curls his fingers around the thin bones of Otacon’s wrist, hand slipping under IV lines.

He feels a bit like a dog standing watch over his owner.

The thought makes him want to smile, but it comes out more like a grimace, an awful nauseous feeling clenching through his chest.

He thumbs Otacon’s pulse and counts the small taps, not entirely sure which rhythm is Otacon’s wrist and which is his own heartbeat in his thumb. It doesn’t entirely matter.

He waits.

x

How long ago was it that Snake threw out his back?

It was sometime after the mustache. 

He found himself laying flat on the floor of the upstairs storage space, still stinking of cigarette smoke, spiking all throughout with pain and unable to move. He had to yell for Otacon, who came running up very white-faced with Sunny at his heels.

It turned into a good laugh when they learned it wasn’t something more serious. Otacon called one of their medical connections to come set him right via codec, and all the while Sunny sat beside Snake wordlessly on the floor tracing the fish on his stupidly gaudy Goodwill shirt.

“Getting old, huh Snake?” Otacon said, teasing but with a depth of concern at the back of his eyes. They both knew on some level that this was the start of something bad.

“Guess so.”

“Even legendary heroes. Come on, Sunny, give him some room.”

They always had the good pills onhand.

x

Snake doesn’t want to think about Otacon getting tortured. It’s something he’s thought of before during darker spells, perhaps even in long bouts of insomnia with Otacon right there curled beside him in bed, perfectly fine. It was always tempered by that fact, that Otacon was fine.

Now, not so much.

Is Snake angry, or simply very tired and sad? It’s hard to tell here in Otacon’s hospital room. His emotions have left the building, leaving him hollowed out and raw, like they clawed themselves out of his insides and now everything’s a great mess in there of loose fibers and empty spaces.

He wants to sleep; he can’t possibly sleep. There’s a sort of familiarity in that.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there in the dark just watching Otacon’s face and thumbing circles against his wrist. But eventually, Otacon stirs.

His eyes barely open, and in fact the only way Snake knows they’ve opened at all is from the suddenly attentive way that Otacon’s face is turned to him now, slackness shifting into expression.

“Otacon.”

“Snake?” Very hoarse, very small.

Waking up, there’s a moment when the past doesn’t exist, when the brain doesn’t quite know itself. Snake waits as that moment passes, and Otacon’s eyebrows knit together, pained.

“You’re in the hospital,” Snake explains quietly. “We’re safe. Nastasha and I got you out.”

“Sunny…” Otacon’s face absolutely crumbles.

“She’s ok, Hal. She’s with Mei Ling. She’s safer than us, even.”

Otacon shakes his head infinitesimally, but winces and squeezes his eyes shut.

“How are you feeling?”

“Messed up… Spinny… How bad is it?”

“They’re still figuring that out.”

Otacon’s lips twist bitterly, almost a self-deprecating smile, and that’s the moment Snake knows Hal is still Hal. He hadn’t realized that was such an adamant fear.

He leans forward in his chair and reaches out his free hand to cup Otacon’s face, thumbs the tailend of his eyebrow, fingertips in greasy hair… Otacon lets out a long breath, eyes still closed.

“Whatever happened in there, whatever they did to you…” Snake says. “We’ve got doctors, alright? We’ve got help. And I’m here. Whatever you need from me, it’s yours.”

“We never should’ve taken that job, Snake.”

“I know.”

Otacon lets out another long breath, shaky, and breathes in. He’s trying not to cry. Snake runs his hand through his hair, doesn’t care about the grime of it, just the familiarity and the warmth of Otacon’s skin just underneath.

“Hal, what do you need from me?”

“Sunny’s really ok?”

“She’s safe. She’ll be ok.”

Otacon swallows. “Nobody… Nobody died getting me out, did they?”

This is reserved for allies. “No. Everybody’s fine.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re ok?”

Snake pauses. Otacon opens his eyes again to look at him, but that lets a couple of tears out that were trapped in there, and they squeeze down his face. Snake shifts his hand to neatly brush them away on his knuckles.

“Coulda lost you,” Snake admits.

“Yeah.”

“… I’ll be ok too, Hal.”

Otacon sniffs. “You love me?” he asks, voice cracking. A moment of weakness.

“Completely, Hal.”

That’s when the doctor shows up, the same thirty something woman from before. She lets Snake stay seated as she checks up on Otacon and quietly explains the knowns of his condition, in a soothing voice, simply and concisely for his painkiller-addled stupor.

Snake maintains some discretion, but he doesn’t let go of Otacon’s wrist.

x

In the morning, before Otacon’s next x-ray, Snake sits at Otacon’s bedside reading a magazine through a headache, having gone without sleep. Otacon wakes up and fizzles out again in bits and pieces. He’s mostly lucid, but sometimes a little loopy, which is when he gets weepy. But altogether he doesn’t cry very much.

Snake is fiercely proud of him.

During one patch of awakeness, Otacon tells him everything that happened, quietly and abortive. Darkly, Snake is thankful for certain things that didn’t happen but his imagination supplied. However, the tactics the thugs did use are all too familiar, and not at all a gift. This was never supposed to happen to Otacon.

He’s angry again, but for Otacon’s sake maintains soft words, guiding Otacon through parsing these experiences, putting them in boxes where they can be managed. It’ll never be easy. It’ll never get better entirely. Snake wonders if Otacon will have his own versions of nightmares and shame-wrapped bursts of anxiety and dark depression now. But his job is simply to listen and to divert Otacon’s pain into the right places, like channeling water. 

Otacon always did the same for him.

There’s even a moment when they laugh. When Snake reads aloud some stupid snippet of an article, a naïve piece of politics that they both know far more deeply and twistedly.

They’re whole still, both of them. They survived.

x 

They finally get a useful x-ray, and it’s about as bad as Snake expected.

Otacon will need surgery. Simple enough, except that even with physical therapy the doctors don’t predict he’ll ever return to his original strength. He’s lucky not to be paralyzed, but he won’t be able to run again. Walking will be painful and plodding at first. After therapy, at most he might be able to lift a gallon of milk.

Those aren’t the right specs for running from the Patriots.

It’s not the worst case scenario, Snake keeps telling himself that. Otacon is alive. But as the young doctor speaks calmly to her patient and introduces him to his soon-to-be surgeon, Snake excuses himself from the room.

He needs to take a walk.

The idea was to be alone but Nastasha follows him, keeping his brisk pace easily as they plow through hallway after hallway in the mazelike hospital, until Snake’s calves and lower back twinge.

Getting old…

“I have another mission for you, Snake,” Nastasha says finally. “Just in from Mei Ling.”

Snake stops right there in the middle of the hall and Nastasha stops with him, without wasting a step.

“You’re saying I gotta get out of here already,” he growls.

“There’s more to be said than that, Snake.”

The truth is right there in front of him, unavoidable, with a big damn neon sign, but he can’t look at it except through the corner of his eye.

Everything in him is pulling back towards Otacon’s room, digging nails into the floor, roots under the bed. He needs to be here.

But the truth is too bright. He can see it on the backs of his eyelids even.

This is where David needs to be, but there are needs far greater than David’s in this world.

From the beginning, he and Otacon always agreed that the mission was most important, in every instance. They even said it aloud, quietly and bluntly on some long moonlit drive, that they were both willing to sacrifice everything for the greater things they were fighting to protect.

Everything.

On the most basic level, survival is most important. The world can survive without David’s family. The world can survive without David supporting his best friend through one of the hardest trials of his life.

But the world needs Solid Snake.

The corners of Snake’s mouth pull tight and for a long moment he simply stands there with Nastasha silent beside him. Then he makes her squawk by reeling back and smacking a wall as hard as he can. It’s solid cement under the mild-colored paint. The pain shoots all the way up through his arm, but nothing more major than he’s had before. He smacks it a few times, even too frugal for the hand-breaking punch he craves most. Logic and training always win out over emotion in the end.

And Hal and Sunny. They can survive without him.

x

When Snake returns to Otacon’s room, the doctors have gone and Otacon is sitting with the magazine from earlier in his lap, although he isn’t reading it. He still doesn’t have any glasses. Instead, he’s staring down at it and at his own hands, at least until Snake walks in and he glances up to shoot him a wobbly smile.

Snake sits, leans forward somewhat with his hands hanging between his knees. He meets Otacon’s eyes.

He knows Otacon must see exactly what he’s about to say, but Otacon’s wobbly smile continues. A wavering hope.

“Fucked, aren’t we?” Otacon says.

Snake grunts in mild assent. He has to fight to keep looking at Otacon. He owes him that, and perhaps on some darker self-punishing level he’s decided he must witness the effects of his own blow.

“I’m leaving,” Snake says.

“Yeah.” Otacon’s eyebrows do a strange little pinch, but that plastic smile doesn’t break despite its shifts. “You’ve got a job to do, Snake.”

“A couple of Nastasha’s boys will stay here with you, make sure you’re safe. Sunny’s with Mei Ling still. If it’s safe, they’ll come here too. Mei Ling will organize everything for you both from there.”

“If I can get a computer, I can…”

“Otacon.”

Otacon’s mouth squeezes shut.

Snake spends a long moment stacking the words in his head, trying to find the right configuration, but in the end none of them are right.

“Mei Ling will be organizing a situation and identity where you and Sunny can live as civilians.” There it is. “You can have a normal life… at least some approximation of it. You’ll still be monitored, protected. But you’ll be safe. Limited mobility doesn’t work with the life we’ve lived until now, Hal. You’d just die needlessly.” With all the information on the table, he finds himself unable to conclude it. “I’m sorry.”

The smile is gone. “You’re saying I won’t work with Philanthropy anymore? I won’t be your partner?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

Snake nods slowly. “Nastasha already has an assignment I need to attend to as soon as possible. I’ll be doing it alone.”

“Bullshit!” Finally Otacon grits his teeth, and Snake watches closely, waits, but Otacon throws his head aside to stare at the wall, leaving Snake with just an expanse of neck and dark hair.

“I’m sorry, Hal.”

“You need me!” Otacon rasps, intense and desperate but still looking at the wall rather than at his partner.

Snake’s lips press very thin. He tries not to notice Otacon’s heaving breaths, holding down the sobs no doubt broiling up in his throat at this prospect of uselessness, of everything he gave his life for—Philanthropy, _Snake_ —walking onward without him. Snake knows him too well.

“I don’t need you,” Snake says, very softly.

Because it’s the truth, and he owes Otacon that, always.

Philanthropy always needed Snake above all others. With a soldier to deploy, it doesn’t matter who does the backup, not really. Otacon was a fiercely important member of the organization but where Snake can’t be replaced… Otacon can. And the fact is, Otacon won’t be able to perform the way he did before, never again. He’ll be killed. There is no justifiable reason to keep Otacon onboard.

_I don’t need you._ It’s the truth, but it sticks like bile in Snake’s throat.

It’s the truth, but in another conversation, one they are not having, it is also the worst lie he’s told in his entire life.

Otacon makes a choking sound and presses the side of his face further into his pillow, as if trying to squeeze as far away from Snake’s gaze as possible. Snake can see the misery of his expression only in the tightness of his jaw, the trembling tension of his throat.

“Hal…” Snake says, and then finds that he has no words at all for this. It never occurred to him that they would be necessary, words of parting. In some way, he always thought Otacon would be behind him in everything, right up until one of them died.

What do you say when you leave someone?

Snake has left many people before, usually in silence, more often than not drunk.

As Otacon’s sobs grow, wet and suffocating, Snake realizes that’s really all he knows how to do.

Just leave. Don’t turn back.

He lays a heavy hand on Otacon’s shoulder. The way Otacon’s body leans into his touch even as his face flinches away is devastating.

“Live,” Snake tells him. “That’s why I saved you. I want you to live.”

Otacon shakes his head, not really a disagreement so much as a mindless gesture of grief.

It isn’t right to kiss him right now, and with that comes the realization that Snake will probably never kiss him again.

His grip on Otacon’s shoulder tightens.

“You earned a real life, Hal. You earned a lot more than I can ever give you.”

Otacon cries, and Snake can’t stop himself from reaching up to gently palm the hair away from Otacon’s forehead.

I love you. I’ll never forget you. You made my life worth something for the first time.

Wouldn’t it be cruel to say those things now?

He tucks a curl behind Otacon’s ear, then straightens, and finds himself far too calmly and methodically getting to his feet, leaving the room, leaving Otacon to his breakdown and the rest of his life.

He doesn’t get to say goodbye to Sunny at all.

x


	3. Chapter 3

Four Years Later

 

The doctors tell Snake exactly how limited his life is within hours of takeoff for the Middle East. He spends the flight hunched in his quarters of the Nomad, staring down at his knobby old hands, flexing his fingers slowly. The veins and thin bones protrude, his skin sagging. He knows his hair right down to the mustache is all gray now, although he avoids actually looking at himself in the mirror these days.

Fairly enough, most of his allies avoid looking at him for similar reasons.

If this really is Liquid he’s off to hunt down, this could very well be his final mission. Surely that will kill him off before the aging does.

He’s alone on the Nomad. It’s a tiny airship set up by some of Nastasha’s fringe connections to keep him hovering out of reach of any particular national government. The only way to avoid the Patriots at this stage of the game is to avoid touching down between borders anywhere. Everything and everyone is on the Patriots’ side. That’s simply how controlling the world works.

He has trouble lighting a cigarette, but finally manages and chainsmokes the rest of his pack. The whole place reeks of cigarettes. They’re his only hobby.

For the first time in a long time, he thinks of Hal. _You should really stop smoking._

He shakes his head and exhales long and burning through his nose.

“Cigarettes aren’t going to kill me,” he gripes to nobody.

Hal’s face isn’t clear in his mind any more. It’s been so long, and he can’t shake the guilt of being unable to hold onto every detail in his memory. Sunny probably looks nothing like a three-year-old any more. Would he even recognize her?

He shakes his head again, dissipating smoke, and inhales long around his cigarette.

It triggers a wet coughing fit.

But that’s good. He hasn’t had the strength to think of them in a long time.

Instead he thinks of nothing in particular.

x

Every fight has an end, of course. Even his. As impossible as his life was, he finds himself on the other side of the battle, somehow still breathing despite the burns, despite his own body trying to eat itself up around him, despite everything.

The Patriots were destroyed.

And Snake’s allies scattered to piece together the broken fragments of the world, leaving behind their garbage, a dying man without anything left to give.

Strange. Snake never expected to outlive his usefulness. If anything his usefulness should have killed him a long time ago.

He’s developed a habit of visiting Arlington, and the last time he does it, he brings a gun.

For a long time he simply sits there in the grass. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? How long has it been since he’s actually been able to notice that? He always comes back to nature in the end, alone. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful in a way this newly rescued world never will be. A world without people.

There’s dandelions everywhere, proliferating as only a weed can, most of their fluffy seeds blown away now, leaving behind empty green stalks.

It’s a day for noticing the details he’s forgotten. He takes in every moment of the grass and the sun and the overcast sky. He breathes in, the subtle smell of the outdoors dulled by so many years of smoking, but he can feel each breath sharp and cold in his lungs. He’s pointedly aware of the motions of his fingers as they prepare the handgun in a way they’ve done so many times before.

He opens his mouth and presses the barrel between his teeth.

There’s so little thought in it. If he actually thought about it, he would probably choose not to. That was always what he wound up doing. In his own twisted way, he always believed. Something about life was still precious to him, important, even if he couldn’t see the light in it at all.

But he stopped thinking a long time ago. It’s just an emptiness occupying his old body now, moving his arms, curling his thumb against the trigger. It’s not quite him doing this. It’s just the logical next step of his apathy.

Still, he sits there frozen for a long time, indulging some sort of ache.

Noticing, noticing. Feeling the prickle of the evening chill coming on.

Then he hears something. Maybe. It’s so faint it could just be an imagining of his cracked up brain.

It’s a jingling sort of music, like from an ice cream truck, or a child’s toy.

The corners of his mouth gap wetly around the gun, and he’s not quite sure what he’s doing until he finally has to lower the gun, spit following it, so he can laugh. It’s a brittle sound.

Of all the places to hear some stupid jingle… It’s familiar but not familiar enough that he can place it. Some nostalgia for a childhood he never had.

He curves forward, his back twinging painfully with the awkward position, and laughs stutteringly with his hands pressing the gun harder and harder against the earth. It gives, until there’s dirt brushing his knuckles and he’s going to leave a gun-shaped mark here above some nameless soldier’s grave.

Nature’s peace he could get lost in, but humanity always draws him back, doesn’t it?

It’s completely cold. The sun is going down.

What do I do now?

The question creeps up on him, as if it was waiting for him to come around before quietly stepping to the forefront.

If Snake has no use left as a hero, and no use dying before his body decides to wither away completely, that only leaves one more option.

It’s time to go home.

x

Two Months Later

 

It’s an ordinary house, perhaps alarming in its ordinariness, tall and thin squished between larger places on either side. The paint is peeling under the windows, but it’s a nice place, with three white concrete steps up to the quaint brown door.

It feels foreign. Normalcy, simplicity. It raises the hairs at the back of Snake’s neck, a paranoid awareness that he doesn’t belong here. He feels like some outside virus being attacked slowly by antibodies, so subtle it could be mistaken simply for chilly autumn air surrounding him and a quiet neighborhood packed with cars on the street.

Even his clothes itch. Just a jacket emblazoned with a college he didn’t go to, another Goodwill purchase, an ugly scarf and some jeans. Anyone seeing him will just think he’s a normal old man, and that feels like telling a dangerous lie just by existing.

He rings the doorbell.

Silence, then a breeze and the rustle of leaves on the ground. Normalcy eating away at him, trying to erase him.

Then the door swings inward.

And a little girl looks up at him wedged in the opening.

Her hair is gray, her eyes big and brown, with a big blue fake flower on a clip in her hair. How old is she now? Seven?

Her lips dig in at the corners, shy, her eyes flickering between him and the floor.

“C-Can I h-help you?”

She can talk.

For a moment, Snake finds that he _can’t_ , his throat constricting with… something.

Of course, she doesn’t recognize this old man.

“Sunny, right?” he asks her.

Her eyes widen somewhat, still with a certain melancholy but there’s something fresher about her too, like she’s finally seen some sun…

“Mm,” she says, nodding.

“I’m… a friend of Hal’s.”

She’s watching him with careful interest, taking in information, processing.

“Can I talk to him?”

She nods again, then the door closes as she scurries off.

His heart is pounding between his ears. He can’t pinpoint what he’s afraid of most… It’s not the idea of being thrown out or rejected, he’d deserve as much. It’s more that he’s afraid the person he’ll meet here will be a stranger to him, that the man he knew once is gone forever…

But then the door opens again, and Snake’s breath stops, and it’s Hal.

It’s just. Hal.

His eyes are as big as saucers and he goes paper white, but it’s all Hal through and through, including the new lines around his eyes, the new haircut, the new frames on his glasses.

He opens the door completely and he’s standing well but leaning gently against a cane. He’s in a black turtleneck, hugging the line of his throat up to that sliver of skin under his ear, framed by tufts of dark hair.

“Hal,” Snake says.

Hal makes a strangled sort of noise and presses his fingers up under his glasses.

Snake wants to turn and run.

A number of times, Hal tries to say something but no words come out, his eyes misting, his jaw clenching in between aborted attempts. Then finally, in a very strained voice, he asks, “What _happened_ to you?”

Snake swallows. He knows how he must look—too old for his age, an entire half of his face burned and scarred over. He wonders if Hal can see it in his eyes that he had a gun in his mouth not too long ago. If anyone could see that at a glance, it would be Hal.

“Plenty happened,” Snake says gruffly. “Too much, not enough.”

“Are you…?” Hal reaches out abortively for Snake with his cane hand, stopping halfway and letting it fall again with a tap of the cane against the porch. It’s too painful to complete out loud, but the question is obvious.

Are you dying?

The answer must be just as obvious.

So Snake simply grunts and shrugs one shoulder, as if brushing that conversation away.

Sunny is visible behind Hal in the hallway, pressed against the wall with her hands clasped in front of her. She’s wearing a pair of overall shorts and some large army surplus boots that clash with her girly socks. In that way she always did, she’s absorbing everything, Snake can see it in her too-intelligent face.

Hal seems to have a sixth sense for her now. He squeezes his eyes shut then turns with a small smile forced into place.

“Could you make everybody some tea, Sunny?”

She knows all too well something is wrong, but she nods.

“H-h-how about some eggs?”

“That would be perfect, thank you.”

She disappears around a corner, head down, and Hal turns back to him again.

“Why did you come here?” he asks. It’s not accusatory or spiteful, it’s just… very tired.

There are so many answers to that, a thousand things both said and unsaid between them. In the end the simplest version Snake can boil it down to is, “I missed you.” His voice cracks. Of course, it cracks just by default these days.

Otacon’s face pinches and he heaves a great breath that might have been a sob in another life, but now it’s closer to a small laugh. “I missed you too,” he says. There are tears escaping the corners of his eyes now but he’s smiling. “I’m happy to see you again.”

He shuffles aside to hold the door open with his back and gestures. “Come inside, Snake, I—” He stops, the tears falling freely now. “David,” he says instead. “Come in.”

David crosses the threshold into a warm, comfortable house, Hal’s hand on his arm, guiding him further.

x

Tea and eggs is not a snack David is accustomed to, but apparently it’s normal around here.

There’s a little kitchen with a table squeezed into it so it doubles as a rudimentary dining room, and Sunny finishes cooking three eggs sunny side up. They’re overdone, a metallic smell permeating the room of burnt protein, but Hal is rather negligent, uncharacteristically to David’s view, making his slow way across to a counter perpendicular with the stove where the electric tea kettle is beeping obnoxiously. Hal walks slowly, upright but with plodding footsteps. He’s able to leave the cane propped up against the refrigerator while he pours their tea, but everything in his mannerisms is simply… slower. Not necessarily more careful, there’s certainly a familiarity to his actions and therefore a mundaneness, but it’s different than the old Hal, and David knew the old Hal so well that he notices this plainly.

There’s only two flavors of tea, blueberry or chamomile, and David opts for the blueberry when asked. He just stands there awkwardly watching them until he’s ushered into a chair at the too-small table.

There are three chairs, and David wonders how noticeable the third one’s emptiness has been. Or was it even empty at all?

David and Hal sit across from each other with Sunny between them, and they each get an egg apiece and a chipped mug of watery tea.

Without a word, Sunny starts eating. Like she’s hoping it’ll prevent her from having to talk.

It’s a lot different, isn’t it?

Hal starts poking at his egg too, obviously not altogether eager to actually eat it, but looking at the egg is easier than looking at David.

“This is my friend David,” he says to Sunny. “He’s one of my oldest and closest friends.”

Sunny nods and eats too fast. Of course the name David means nothing to her. He’d always been Uncle Snake.

“He and I used to work to together,” Hal says, painfully blandly. “With Jack too.”

“Raiden?” Sunny finally looks up.

“Yeah. David and Jack are good friends too. Right, David?”

A little caught off guard, David clears his throat. “Yeah. He’s a good friend.” He wonders if Sunny or even Hal knows anything about what Raiden’s life is like now, what he’s become.

Silence.

They awkwardly eat and drink to the quiet clinking of their forks on their plates.

This was David’s home once, wasn’t it? A meal with these people? It’s so cold now.

He realizes Sunny’s looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He meets her gaze and she quickly looks down at her empty plate. Hers is the only empty one.

“D-did you like the eggs?” she asks.

David can tell she’s talking to him, and perhaps Hal does too, but still Hal immediately says, “Yes, they’re very good! You’re getting better.”

He’s only eaten half.

David hasn’t eaten much at all but he grunts a vague agreement.

There’s a screen door that exits the kitchen out to a tiny yard and in-between space amidst the houses, and all of a sudden this door gets thrown open with a clang and a young boy half-barges in with some exuberant greeting.

It’s so unexpected, David’s brain can’t quite process what the kid said. It’s some sort of creole.

Sunny stands with a quick glance between Hal and David.

“Ah… Hi, George,” says Hal wearily. “Yeah… Yeah, Sunny, why don’t you go play for awhile?”

She leaves like she couldn’t get out of there fast enough with her little friend, and though the boy watches David curiously for a moment, he’s quick out to door too, the door swinging shut again with a clatter.

Leaving David and Hal alone again.

Hal pushes his plate away with a sigh. “I really hate eggs,” he admits.

“Pretty sure people who like eggs would hate these too after awhile.”

“She’s trying,” Hal says, a little defensively, as if he’s the only one allowed to criticize her. That’s true, probably. David’s still an outsider, isn’t he?

David pushes his plate away as well and rests his hands on the table, curling absently into fists of their own accord.

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” he says.

Hal nods. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” he says gently. The truth of that is rather painful in itself.

There are so many things David always, always wanted to say to Hal, lying awake at night letting himself wonder where Hal and Sunny were, what they were doing, if they were even alive and safe as advertised… At the end there, he truly believed all of his allies would easily lie to him about that, to keep him focused on the mission at hand. Hal and Sunny could easily have been used against him, even, if it meant he finished his job. He didn’t begrudge these people. It was simply that their loyalties were stretched so thin under such duress, such an impossible task, that it finally broke. And it all turned out well in the end, well for the world, so what did it matter?

They’d all done things they regretted for the greater good.

“Hal, I’m sorry.” The words just fall out.

“For what?” Hal asks carefully. He knows of course, but he’s navigating smartly, making sure everything is crystal clear for both of them.

“Leaving you. Especially in the state you were in.” David has spent so much time feeling utterly hollow and broken that the wave of anger that boils up in his chest is somehow new and welcome. Anger at everything, but mostly himself. “If there had been any other way…”

“There wasn’t,” Hal says, very sadly.

They both understand the reasoning, they always did. But there’s something _more_ , something frustratingly difficult to articulate, and David’s fingernails are digging burningly into his palms.

“I’ll never forgive myself for doing that to you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No. You needed me.”

“Stop, Dave, I…”

“I failed you. You never would have done to me what I did to you. I might as well have--”

“Don’t you use this as an excuse to hate yourself, that’s not your right,” Hal says, suddenly dagger sharp.

David shuts up.

Hal needs a few breaths to calm himself, scowling at the tabletop. “It’s been four years. It’s been… unbearable. So much has been unbearable. But in all that… do you really think I was wasting my time hating you? You think I could even do that?”

“I know you didn’t.”

“Then don’t make this all about your own self-loathing and ignore us and what we’ve been through,” Hal says. Another deep breath. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

David grits his teeth and nods.

They sit in tense silence for a moment, as Hal carefully props his elbows on the table and knits his fingers together.

“I’ve kept up with everything, of course,” he says softly. “The news but also what the news doesn’t know. Mei Ling has kept us updated sometimes but also… Well. A hacker is a hacker for life, I guess. I know everything you did. The decision you made was difficult but… You did the right thing, Dave. You gave everything of yourself to do the right thing and…” Deep breaths again but now for a different reason. “I’m incredibly _proud_ of you.”

Words can truly save a person, can’t they?

All at once David’s worn body, with all its aches and pains, feels lighter than it has in years. Like if it all just falls apart now, he won’t even mind anymore. Something more important is stitching itself back together, something that will still remain even when the old bones fall away.

“Sunny,” David croaks. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yeah. She is.”

“You’ve done good work, Hal. I’m proud of you too. I always was.”

Hal removes his glasses to scrub his hands down his face. Then, rather abruptly, he stands, his chair knocked off course with a screech. He plods over to David, and David simply waits for whatever is next, until Hal’s up against his back, wrapping his arms around his shoulders, burying his wet face in David’s neck and sobbing openly. From this position, all David can really do is hold Hal’s wrist tightly, brush his other hand up Hal’s arm and pat his shoulder.

“I never stopped loving you,” David says, meaning it more than he’s perhaps ever meant anything.

“I know.”

x

They kiss. It’s a stupid sort of kiss, there’s so much more they need to be saying and doing instead of kissing, but it feels like they have to dig their fingers into whatever fragment they’ve latched onto, this tiny frayed string still holding them together. They were always supposed to be together. As men, it was all they ever wanted.

That’s gone now. There’s so much lost time, and so little time left, there’s no way they can be all that they want to be together. But they can be _here_ , in this little kitchen. They can be in each other’s arms, press their chests together, light up older more broken bodies with a ghost of the passions they once had when it was just them against the world, when they honestly believed that was all it took.

Instead they learned the true cost of heroism, but David thinks as he presses Hal gently up against the kitchen counter, mouthing the patch of skin over his turtleneck, that he might be able to find himself again before he dies if he’s here with Hal. Hal and Sunny. The people he loves…

He needs to say that.

“I love you,” mumbled into Hal’s jaw.

Hals’ breath hitches and he clenches his fingers in David’s hair, painfully, but the heel of his fist is also cradling the back of David’s head, firm.

I’m here because I loved you more than anybody else. Because I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere I actually wanted to be. I’m here because I need you.

David understands with an incredible lightness that he can say this whenever he wants now. Tomorrow, or the next day. There will be time now with these people.

But right now all that matters is finding his way back to Hal’s mouth again, gentle deep warm needing kisses…

Somewhere in the body of a scarred old man, David feels himself emerge again with a triumphant roar.

x

Afterwards, Hal needs a moment alone.

He’s overwhelmed, and David simply lets him go plod away into some other corner of the house to calm down and whatever else he needs. There’s so much still broken. It won’t be easy existing like this.

But there’s no other way to exist, is there?

David does the dishes, then pulls out a cigarette and smokes with the screen door open, shoulder against the doorjamb.

Eventually, he watches as Sunny comes stomping back home through the scraggly yard in her large boots.

She stops in front of him, and he doesn’t move out of the way right away, instead watching her as she watches him, finally raising his eyebrows.

“What’s with the nasty look?” he asks her. Because her nose is wrinkled up in a rather comical look of disgust he wouldn’t have expected from her.

She has so much more personality now that she’s had room to grow and be a normal little girl. It’ll be like meeting a new person…

“Th-this is a no sssmoking house!” she says, very sternly, and reaches up a little hand. It only reaches up to his chest.

She’s got little blue fingernails, with daisy decals. But they’re chipped and short, like she chews them nervously.

He removes his cigarette from his mouth slowly, licks his thumb and forefinger to pinch it out then drops the stub into her offered hand.

She downright throws it into the grass and grinds it into submission with the toe of her boot. She’s so incredibly vehement about it that he has to laugh, as dry and strained a sound as that is these days.

“You’re probably right,” he mutters.

She looks up at him again, and the ire is all gone, just big-eyed observation again, so familiar. Her eyes rove all over his face, searching.

Does she recognize anything in there?

If she does, then she’s an adult already. She doesn’t say anything about it, just gives a small smile.

“D-did you like the eggs?” she asks again.

“I dunno, they were a little flat.”

She ignores him. “They p-predict the future. They were really yellow t-t-today.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I th-think so.”

They were pretty burnt too to his memory, but he says, “I’ll take your word for it” with more solemnity than intended.

When he finally lets her back into the kitchen, Hal is on his way back, with red-rimmed eyes and a thin mouth, but he smiles reflexively at Sunny, and his body seems to follow suit with loosening up.

“I guess we’ll have to cook an actual dinner now that we have a guest, huh?” he says.

Sunny grins, an enormous smile with teeth and everything.

David has never seen such a smile from her before. It takes his breath away.

But even as he’s frozen in place, Sunny is already getting new plates out (set low in the cabinet so she can reach), and Hal is dusting off a cookbook that clearly hasn’t seen much use at all.

For a split second, David almost feels that insidious normalcy creeping up on him again, trying to destroy him.

“Need me to cut anything?” he asks roughly, and it’s gone.

They’re awkward, it’s a kitchen too small for three people working.

But they manage.


End file.
